The First Steps Are Not Small

There is a peculiar thing we humans do when we encounter ancient wisdom. We study it. We underline it. We commit it to memory, discuss it in classrooms, and occasionally congratulate ourselves for understanding it. Then we close the book, put it back on the shelf, and go about our lives as though we hadn't just been handed the instructI have often wondered why we do this.

In yoga teacher training, we introduce students to the Eight Limbs of Yoga, as outlined by the sage Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. And there, standing at the very beginning of this extraordinary path toward liberation, are the Yamas.

Five simple principles.

Ahimsa. Satya. Asteya. Brahmacharya. Aparigraha.

We learn their Sanskrit names, their translations, and perhaps even their philosophical significance. We might discuss them for an afternoon before moving on to something that feels a little more like yoga. Something involving a mat, a posture, or a particularly impressive ability to stand on one's head.

But I think we have missed something rather enormous.

The Yamas are not the preliminary reading before the real work begins.

They are the real work.

Much like the Ten Commandments in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Yamas offer a moral foundation for living. And when we begin to look closely at these ancient teachings, we discover something rather extraordinary.

Across thousands of years, in different corners of the world, through different religions, scriptures, prophets, and sages, humanity has been offered remarkably similar guidance.

Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet what belongs to another. Practice compassion. Live truthfully. Restrain your desires. Honor something greater than yourself.

Whether we encounter these teachings in the Ten Commandments, the Yoga Sutras, the teachings of the Buddha, or the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, we find recurring reminders of how to live with greater awareness, kindness, and responsibility.

Of course, these traditions are not identical. Their beliefs about God, the soul, liberation, and salvation may differ profoundly. But their shared ethical wisdom is difficult to overlook.

It seems that humanity has been receiving some version of these instructions for a very long time.

And yet, we continue to struggle with the very things they warn us against.

We lie. We judge. We envy. We harm. We become attached to possessions, opinions, people, and the endless desire to have life unfold according to our preferences.

Perhaps the problem is not that we have never been told how to live.

Perhaps the problem is that we have mistaken knowing the teachings for living them.

The Ten Commandments are not simply words carved into stone, any more than the Yamas are simply Sanskrit words written in a yoga manual. They are guides for the human experience, offering us a way to examine our behavior, our relationships, and the suffering we create through ignorance.

Within Hindu philosophy, this ignorance is known as Avidya. It is not the ignorance of someone who has never read a book or received an education, but something far more deeply rooted. It is our misunderstanding of who we truly are, our attachment to what is temporary, and our inability to recognize the deeper reality of existence.

It is from this ignorance that so much of our suffering arises.

And perhaps this is why the great spiritual traditions have placed such importance on how we live. Because our actions, our thoughts, and our intentions can either deepen our suffering or begin to free us from it.

The ancient Hindu prayer from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad expresses this beautifully:

Asato ma sad gamaya.

Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya.

Mrityor ma amritam gamaya.

Lead me from the unreal to the Real.

Lead me from darkness to light.

Lead me from death to immortality.

What if the journey from darkness to light is not nearly as mysterious as we imagine?

What if it begins by practicing the very things we have been told, again and again, for thousands of years?

The first Yama is Ahimsa, nonviolence, or non-harming.

We hear its echo in the commandment, Thou shalt not kill.

But Ahimsa invites us to look beyond the physical act of violence, asking us to consider the harm we cause through our words, thoughts, judgments, and even the quiet hostility we carry around like a stone in our pocket.

How many times have we wounded someone with a sentence we could have swallowed? How many times have we rehearsed an old grievance until the person who hurt us has taken up permanent residence in our minds, living there rent-free and making a terrible mess of the place?

And how often is the person we harm most mercilessly ourselves?

We call ourselves foolish, inadequate, unworthy. We examine our failures with the dedication of a scientist and overlook our goodness as though it were an insignificant detail.

Ahimsa asks us to consider another way.

Then comes Satya, truthfulness.

The Ten Commandments warn us against bearing false witness. Satya asks us to cultivate truthfulness not only in what we say to others, but in how we understand ourselves and the world around us.

Not simply the absence of lying, but the courage to live truthfully. To stop inventing comfortable stories about ourselves and others. To recognize where fear has disguised itself as certainty, where pride has disguised itself as righteousness, and where our desire to be right has become more important than our desire to understand.

Truthfulness requires courage, certainly. But it also requires compassion. A truth delivered with cruelty may be factually correct and still cause unnecessary harm.

And so we begin to see how these teachings are connected. Satya cannot be practiced wisely without considering Ahimsa. Truthfulness and nonviolence must learn to live together.

Asteya, non-stealing, follows.

Again, we hear the familiar commandment: Thou shalt not steal.

We generally consider ourselves innocent of theft because we have never walked out of a store with something tucked beneath our coats.

But what about stealing someone's peace with our anger? Their time with our thoughtlessness? Their confidence with our criticism?

And what of the ways we rob ourselves of the present moment by living perpetually in a future that has not arrived or a past that refuses to leave?

There are so many ways to take what has not been freely given.

Brahmacharya teaches us to live with a conscious and respectful relationship to our energy and desires.

We might recognize a parallel in the commandment against adultery, although Brahmacharya, traditionally associated with celibacy or chastity, carries a broader significance within yogic life.

For those of us living in the world, it can invite us to examine how we direct our energy, how we honor our relationships, and whether our desires are serving our spiritual growth or quietly governing our lives.

What deserves our attention? What nourishes our spirit? And what leaves us depleted, distracted, and endlessly hungry for something we cannot quite name?

And finally, Aparigraha, non-possessiveness.

Thou shalt not covet.

Perhaps one of the most difficult teachings in a world that has built an entire economy around convincing us that happiness is waiting inside the next purchase, achievement, relationship, or beautifully wrapped package.

We collect things. We collect accomplishments. We collect opinions about who we are supposed to be. We even collect our wounds, carefully preserving them as evidence of what life has done to us.

And then we wonder why we feel so burdened.

Aparigraha asks what might happen if we loosened our grip.

Not necessarily on the things themselves, but on our insistence that they belong to us, define us, or must remain exactly as they are.

It is a remarkable thing, this ancient wisdom.

Five principles that seem almost embarrassingly simple until we attempt to practice even one of them for an entire day.

And when we consider that the Ten Commandments offer such closely related guidance, and that Buddhist teachings, Christian teachings, Jewish teachings, Islamic teachings, and so many other spiritual paths also emphasize honesty, compassion, restraint, and responsibility, we might begin to wonder why these messages continue to appear throughout human history.

Perhaps they are not merely rules intended to keep society from falling apart.

Perhaps they are also instructions for freeing ourselves from the very habits that make us unhappy.

And perhaps the wisdom lies not simply in being told what not to do, but in discovering what becomes possible when we stop doing it.

When we stop harming, compassion has room to grow.

When we stop lying, we begin to live without the burden of maintaining our illusions.

When we stop stealing, we learn to respect the boundaries and dignity of others.

When we stop allowing our desires to govern our lives, we discover greater freedom.

And when we stop clinging, we begin to understand what it means to be content.

The Niyamas, the second limb of yoga, continue this work by inviting us to cultivate purity, contentment, discipline, self-study, and devotion to the Divine.

They remind us that spiritual life is not simply about refraining from harmful behavior. It is also about nurturing the qualities that allow wisdom, peace, and compassion to flourish.

And perhaps that is what it means to move from the darkness of ignorance toward the light of knowledge.

Not simply to accumulate spiritual information, but to allow that knowledge to transform the way we live.

Because the Yamas are not small steps.

They are enormous ones.

And perhaps that is why Patanjali placed them first. Before the postures, before the breath practices, before the deeper states of meditation, comes the invitation to examine how we live.

What good is the ability to sit in perfect stillness for an hour if we rise from our meditation cushion and spend the remainder of the day causing suffering to ourselves and everyone unfortunate enough to cross our path?

What good is spiritual knowledge if it never finds its way into our ordinary human lives?

The Hindu understanding of karma reminds us that our actions carry consequences. Our thoughts, words, and deeds cultivate tendencies that shape our experiences. The suffering we encounter is not always of our own making, but the way we respond to life can either deepen that suffering or begin to loosen its hold.

And therein lies an extraordinary possibility.

We can change the way we experience life by changing the way we participate in it.

We need not wait for the world to become kinder before we practice kindness. We need not wait for others to become truthful before we examine our own honesty. We need not wait until we have everything we desire before discovering the freedom of wanting less.

And we certainly need not master all five Yamas before our lives begin to change.

I believe that working sincerely with Ahimsa alone could change a person's life forever.

Imagine, for a moment, what it would mean to practice non-harming for just one day.

To awaken in the morning and refrain from the usual criticisms of yourself.

To encounter someone difficult and consider the possibility that their unkindness is the expression of their own suffering.

To speak honestly without the need to wound.

To disagree without contempt.

To recognize an angry thought without immediately inviting it to become an angry word.

To forgive yourself for being human while extending that same consideration to others.

And perhaps, most importantly, to understand that nonviolence does not mean allowing others to harm us. Sometimes Ahimsa requires a firm boundary, a difficult truth, or the courage to walk away. Compassion need not come at the expense of our own well-being.

Imagine how much suffering might begin to dissolve, not because the circumstances of our lives had miraculously changed, but because we had changed our relationship to them.

And imagine the space that might open for joy.

Not the fleeting joy of getting what we want, or having someone finally behave the way we believe they should, but a quieter and more enduring kind of joy. The kind that comes when the mind no longer feels compelled to wage war against every disappointment, every difference, every imperfection.

Perhaps this is what we overlook when we teach the Yamas as a chapter in a yoga manual.

We are not studying ancient philosophy merely to become better yoga teachers.

We are studying it to become more conscious human beings.

And this is what I find so profoundly beautiful about the wisdom shared across spiritual traditions. Whether we are reading the Ten Commandments, contemplating the teachings of Patanjali, or listening to the words of a spiritual teacher, we are continually being invited to look beyond our ignorance, our fears, and our attachments.

To become more aware of ourselves and more compassionate toward one another.

To recognize that the darkness from which we seek liberation is not always something outside us. Sometimes it is our own anger, our own jealousy, our own unwillingness to forgive, or our insistence that happiness can only come when the world behaves as we think it should.

And the light of knowledge is not simply knowing that these things cause suffering.

It is recognizing them within ourselves and choosing another way.

Perhaps that is the difference between studying spirituality and living a spiritual life.

One fills our minds with knowledge.

The other allows that knowledge to change our hearts.

And perhaps liberation is not something reserved for saints sitting cross-legged in caves or sages who have renounced the world. It begins here, in the kitchen, in traffic, in our relationships, and in those private conversations we have with ourselves when nobody else is listening.

It begins in the smallest moments, with choices that are anything but small.

So perhaps, rather than rushing through the five Yamas on our way to the next lesson, we might spend some time with the very first one.

Ahimsa.

Not as a Sanskrit word to memorize.

Not as an ideal we admire from a comfortable distance.

But as a living practice.

Today, notice where violence appears in its quieter forms. In impatience. In judgment. In resentment. In the stories we tell ourselves about those who have hurt us. In the harshness with which we sometimes greet our own reflection.

And then consider what it might mean to respond differently.

Not perfectly. Not always. But consciously.

Because Ahimsa is more than the absence of violence. It is the deliberate cultivation of compassion. It is the recognition that the life moving through another person is not separate from the life moving through us.

And perhaps that is where our contemplation might begin.

What would my life look like if I chose not to harm?

What suffering might I stop creating?

What old wounds might I finally stop reopening?

What joy might find its way into the spaces where anger once lived?

We could spend a lifetime contemplating these questions, and I suspect it would be a lifetime well spent.

For now, perhaps it is enough to begin with one thought, one word, one action.

And to spend a little time contemplating not merely the principle, but the act and the art of Ahimsa.

The act is what we choose to do.

The art is learning to live with such compassion that nonviolence is no longer something we must consciously practice, but something that has become part of who we are.

Hari Om Tat Sat